Our house is on fire. Join the resistance: Do no harm/take no shit. My idiosyncratic and confluent bricolage of progressive politics, the collaborative commons, next generation cognitive neuroscience, American pragmatism, de/reconstruction, dynamic systems, embodied realism, postmetaphysics, psychodynamics, aesthetics. It ain't much but it's not nothing.

Monday, February 2, 2015

The real welfare queens

Regressives hard endlessly about those on social welfare, how they're living high on the hog at our expense of paying them lower than poverty level wages. Meanwhile the richest corporations, while having a nominal tax rate, never seem to pay anywhere near that amount, if anything. So here's Robert Reich on the President's plan for a one-time 14% tax on US corporations' money abroad, which money they've stashed abroad for the very purpose of not paying their fair share in taxes. This money goes to upgrading our infrastructure, something the very same corporations use proportionally way more than the rest of us, so why shouldn't they pay their fair share? They shouldn't according to regressive faux reasoning (aka rationalization). Meanwhile, the infrastructure will put to work hundreds of thousands of Americans, another thing regressives can't stand.

"This morning President Obama sent to Congress a budget that includes a
one-time 14% tax on the $2 trillion in profits big U.S. corporations
have socked away abroad, in order to pay for upgrading highways,
bridges, and public transit in the America. Republicans are already
screaming the proposal is dead on arrival, but it’s a good idea – and it
won’t be dead if more Americans understand the back story.

"That story is that global corporations based in the U.S. get all the advantages
of being American companies -- including aggressive protection of their
worldwide assets through U.S. trade laws, diplomatic deals, and
sometimes even military action -- but avoid U.S. taxes by shifting their
profits abroad. (Under current law, those profits are taxed only if
they're returned to the U.S.) Paying a one-time tax on those global
profits in order to repair America's infrastructure, so Americans can be
more productive and competitive, is the least they can do. If
congressional Republicans want to protect their big business patrons
from paying their fair share, let America see them do it."